Harvesting the Urban Forest

[whitepe]

Rick Schmalzried and I spent about 4 hours Saturday
and 3 hours Sunday harvesting the urban forest.
We got two loads of logs on my 16 foot trailer and
one on Rick's 8 foot trailer. Most of our time Saturday
was spent getting the logs out of a gulley behind the
homeowner's house.  We brought one load back
Saturday and the rest today.  This oughta keep
my LT15 busy for a while.  Rick will post some
more pictures later and I will let him tell about how
we got the logs out of the gulley. We had great weather
this weekend to get these logs out of the homeowner's
gulley.

[Kevin_H.]

whitepe,
Great looking logs, Kinda makes you feel good when you keep that kind of stuff from going to the land fill or to waste.
I cant wait to hear how you got them out.

[whitepe]

Kevin_H.

Here's a picture of the logs before we loaded them
on my trailer today. You can see the gulley behind
the house. Notice the stack of firewood.  The
80 year old homeowner cut and split that by hand
from the tops of the trees. Yes I said 80.  He had orginally planned on cutting and splitting the logs too. Instead he ran
an ad in the paper.  Saw logs $100 or best offer.
When I stopped to look at them and pay him he said
that maybe he bit off more than he could chew.
That's him in the other picture.  When he was 61 he
retired from LTV steel in Hoyt Lakes Minnesota and
came to Peoria and married his pen pal.  Noble,
I'll bet that this 80 year old man reminds you of your father.

[Bro. Noble]

Whitepe,

Nah,  Dad doesn't have a pen pal.

Noble

[Kevin_H.]

Good looking stuff,
You know if you keep this up you are going to have to get a kiln. Now that is value adding.

BTW How did you get them on your trailer?

[whitepe]

Kevin_H,

We put two 8 foot  6X6's on the side of the trailer
perpendicular to the log. Then we fasten each
end of a 50 foot 5/16 steel cable about 8 feet apart
on the other side of the trailer.  We then
run the center of the cable under the log
and wrap it back over the top of the log and
then pull on it from the far side with a second vehicle. It doesn't really take much effort since logs roll really well.
When we have a tight spot and can't get the second
vehicle in place, we use a come-along. Takes a little
longer but it gets the job done.

Whitepe  ;D

[whitepe]

Noble,
I meant the working circles around the younger folks  
not the pen pal stuff.   Now I know why Jeff
get so frustrated.  Aarrggh.  

PU-PEW.  

Jeff,  found and new smilies for me yet?

[whitepe]

Kevin_H.
I forgot.  Rick Schmalzried built a solar kiln at his
house but it only holds about 750 board feet. It is
full of black walnut right now that we put in there
in mid-late Sept.  We will definitely need to build
a bigger kiln.   :(

Whitepe

[Kevin_H.]

Sounds like you got the plan. I guess you pull them off with your green machine ;D

Now we just need rick to post those other pics. You know thats one of the best things about this forum is getting these great ideas from everybody.

Well that and all these cool Santa Smiley's ;)

[OneWithWood]

Whitpe,
You must have had better weather than we had over here.  The ground was too soft for me to do anything outside.  Had to entertain myself welding up a new lumber rack.
Boy do I need to practice welding ;D
Glad to see you rescued those fine logs

[Kevin_H.]

Well I couldn't let whitepe and Rick have all the fun.
About 10 pm last nite a tree service call and asked if I could please haul off some logs for them today.


These two are about 24" DIB and 12' long. Two others were better than 36" DIB and 7' long and a couple of 30" by 6'.
Took me 3 loads to get them all home. These are pin oak but the price was right.
 ;)

[whitepe]

Kevin_H,

Nice Big logs and yes the price is right.
I came home last night after my
kid's basketball game so frustrated that I used
the JD790 and went out and pulled our logs off
of the two trailers.  The only thing good about last
night's game was the nice piece of bird's eye
maple in the floor in front of the scorer's table.

Moving those logs around with a 30hp compact
utility tractor is quite a chore. I think that I need to
get me a CAT telehandler or something. ;)

Onewithwood,
Yea the weather was warm enough to
not get too cold working but not melt the frost
in the ground.  Rick is a pretty good welder.  
If I complain long enough about how bad my own
welding is sooner or later he will volunteer to re-weld
it for me.  ;D  Shall I send him over?

[Noble_Ma]

Kevin, how do you get your logs up on the trailer?  I use a method similar to what Whitepe uses except I have a manual winch.  My biggest problem has been transporting the free stuff back home.

[beenthere]

Being as this thread is about harvesting the urban forest, I recently heard that the USDA Forest Service now realizes that there is more wood volume coming from our urban 'forests' than is now coming off our National Forests.

[OneWithWood]

Whitpe,
I would be embarassed to show my welds to someone who knows what they are doing :-[  I better wait for a few hundred more attempts.
beenthere,
After the latest BBQ in the national forests I am sure the stat will become even more skewed to the urban forests for a while.  Especially after this last round of storms.

[Kevin_H.]

Hey Noble_Ma,
We loaded these logs with a bobcat. They were even a little big for it so we hooked onto one end and lifted it up and backed the trailer under it. Then pushed them the rest of the way on.
If we are doing a large wack we will take our bobcat along but when we do we have to make a special trip back to pick it up.
If we are only doing a couple of logs, like one load, we run a chain off the back in the form of a "v" and put the winch over the top and roll them up on the chain. once on the back of the trailer we we again use the winch to spin the log and pull it up between the fenders.
We use a 4500 lb and double line pull everything. seems to save the battery.
We want to try to make something simular to Fla. Deadheader's setup, but too busy sawing right now.

Hey whitepe,
Before we had the bobcat we would pull the logs around the yard with the pickup...What a pain. :(
Most of the time when we unload, we just back up to our special tree, put a chain between the tree and the log and drive out from under it. Still seems quicker then using the skid steer.

[Noble_Ma]

I set a pair of pipe staging on either side of the truck.  I than put a steel lentel accross that and use a come along with a chain to lift the logs up.  I than drive out from under them.  Slow but it works, saves the tailgate and my back ;D